A lone crow like a town crier repeating the same bit of news: how the rising sun, newly naked, is ablaze beneath the crowns of the oaks.
fall foliage
Two degrees above freezing with a dull gray sky—very Novemberish. Except the trees aren’t bare, the oaks yet to reach their peak of color.
They’re shapeshifting daily now, the faces in the thinning treetops silhouetted against the dawn sky. I push my glasses down to unblur the moon.
On a dark morning, fall colors that seemed bland yesterday are bright embers. Behind the still-green lilac, a deer’s pale legs.
Breezy drizzle mixing in with falling leaves—those that twirl, those that spiral, those that somersault, those that glide.
Gloomy with a few drops of rain. I spot a new-to-me Virginia creeper six feet from the porch: that crimson.
With the understory losing its leaves, the forest is threadbare, shot through with light. In the herb bed, a volunteer tomato is in bloom.
Sunrise. Fingers of orange light through orange leaves. After the furnace cycles off, the silence seems enormous.
Rain and fog. With the goldenrod going gray, the yellow has moved from the meadow to the woods’ edge: spicebush, walnut, birch, elm, tulip tree.
Sunrise hidden by fog, which only turns a lighter shade of gray. Rain falling from the leaves. Leaves falling from the rain.
A low cloud ceiling gravid with rain. It’s quiet. Every few seconds, another yellow leaf zigzags down.
Autumn comes from the ground up: stiltgrass stems reddening as bracken fronds bronze, while funnel spiderwebs snag the fog.
Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.
An east wind raises fallen leaves and makes them fly. The most aerodynamic ones circle slowly, as if searching for the best resting place.